


Humans Are Just...Like That

by CrackingLamb



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: A Cameo By Everyone's Favorite Primarch, Alcohol, Destroy Ending, Drunken Shenanigans, Everybody Lives, F/M, Humor, Post-Canon, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25319722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackingLamb/pseuds/CrackingLamb
Summary: No, really, humans are just like that.Humans are incorrigible and unstoppable, as the Council races have discovered.  Hilarity ensues.Beta'd by Iron_Angel.
Relationships: Female Shepard & Urdnot Wrex, Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 43
Kudos: 121





	Humans Are Just...Like That

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not exist without massive contributions from the Calibrations group. Thank you for letting me take all your words and make them shiny.
> 
> (Your specific callouts will be on tumblr, teehee.)

Wrex approached Shepard and Garrus where they were seeking a quiet moment at the main bar during this seemingly endless Embassy Gala. She supposed she shouldn't complain, it wasn't every day an entire galaxy survived a Reaper invasion, much less had one small human destroy them all. And it was good to finally celebrate their collective survival. Still, the tedium of being the polite Commander was killing her. She watched her hulking friend literally push diplomats aside to reach her and Garrus and wondered if somehow the Reapers had returned without anyone noticing. She might almost welcome it just for a change of pace. Then she saw he was grinning, a full shark's grin of glistening teeth.

“I get the feeling we're about to be in on the joke whether we want to be or not,” Garrus said at her shoulder.

“More than likely. Anything has got to be better than standing here drinking ourselves stupid.”

“Shepard, you have _got_ to see this.” Wrex tugged on her arm until she began to follow him, almost spilling her drink.

“Slow down, Wrex!”

“You don't wanna miss a minute,” the krogan promised.

He dragged her to one of the private lounges of the recently completed Presidium. Thankfully they were _not_ on the Citadel, but a new space station still partially under construction, and thus the reason for holding the Gala here to celebrate. It was something of a grand opening as well. Inside the lounge, a long table was filled to capacity – with more figures of varying species standing around – evidently sharing stories. Shepard noticed a knot of humans that appear to have started the whole thing, as well as attaches from the turian, asari and salarian Embassies. They must have drawn the rest of the crowd over time, judging from the array of empty glasses littering the table top.

An Alliance soldier, his dress blues rumpled and open at the throat, raised his hands to get the attention of the others. “Humans in danger?” he scoffed with a laugh. “We just boost up adrenaline, so we'll rip our own muscles apart to lift a car or some shit. It's pretty common. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.”

The salarian attache, who Shepard recalled being named Norben, poked his head up and shook it at the soldier. “Forgive me, I don't wish to offend, but...why are you like this?”

There was a reverberating round of laughter from all the humans at the table, most of whom were Alliance personnel of some kind or other. Someone standing at the back of the room shouted, “Why are you not?”

One of the krogan, with a face nearly as grizzled as Wrex's, sneered. “Norben, quit complaining. I wanna hear more. So,” the krogan turned back to the soldier, “do your secondary organs kick in or...”

“Nah, we just...deal with it.”

“Yeah,” another voice piped up, a woman Shepard didn't recognize at all. “The injuries can get gnarly, but that's why there's reconstructive surgery.”

A lithe, tall and rather frazzled looking asari with deep blue skin gave a quizzical look around the table. Shepard was pretty sure that was Jatia T'ersi, from Councilor Tevos's office. “Deal with it?”

“Yeah, sometimes people lose a necessary organ, but it happens, ya know? They just keep going. It's better now. We have decent cybernetics for when we can't get donors.”

Shepard, Garrus and Wrex shared a grin between themselves, probably guessing at the outcry about to happen. She remembered, years ago now, when the two of them had first joined the Normandy crew along with Tali. They'd spent a night much like this one, somewhere between Feros and Noveria. Too much alcohol, so many horror stories. If she remembered rightly, it was Kaidan who'd coyly called humanity 'space orcs', then had to spend nearly a half an hour explaining exactly what that meant. The discussion had gone on until Dr. Chakwas was forced to step in and explain to the resident aliens that yes, humans _really_ were like that. She definitely remembered Liara's face looking like the asari attache's did now.

The conversation had flowed on a little while she ruminated, but her attention was drawn back by the turian sitting next to the Alliance soldiers. Shepard recognized his white colony markings and identified him as Herros Resspian, one of Councilor Sparatus's secondary aides. “Wait...you did _what_ with your kidney?”

A Captain, by her stripes, answered, “I gave one away. I was a match for the recipient.”

Herros looked aghast. “A perfect stranger?”

The Captain grinned. “Yup.”

The krogan guffawed until he had to wipe his eyes. “I would be so proud to have a daughter like you!”

“I mean, before artificial organs,” the Captain went on, “we used to just take them from people who volunteered to give them away after death. There's lots that can't be cloned too well, you know, like hearts and lungs.”

“Are you shitting me?” Herros said, apparently drunk enough that he hadn't noticed the Primarch's Reaper Specialist in the doorway. Garrus snorted quietly into his drink and didn't say anything.

Another turian, who Shepard couldn't identify by markings since her back was to them, said, “Wait, I've heard about some of this stuff. Please tell me that 'iron lungs' are a joke. Please?”

The humans in the room erupted into laughter again at her plaintive tone, until a chorus of cheerful denials drowned it out.

Shepard moved unobtrusively into the room to get in a better position to lean against the wall. She'd missed some of the conversation, but now overheard Jatia talking with one of the specialists who'd worked on the Crucible.

“So any time your leaders have refused to step down, you were able to talk them out of it, correct? I have always found human debates fascinating.”

The specialist replied, “Oh no, we'd surround his house and remind him that us not killing him in his sleep was his reward for not abusing us. It’s like this unspoken social contract we have.”

The poor asari didn't seem to quite know how to react. “Uh...huh.”

“Sometimes we also did kill them,” the specialist added with a nod.

“Ah.”

At the other end of the table, it looked like omni-tools had entered the fray, and Herros looked up from a search on his, his mandibles fluttering in an almost frantic way. “Braces? You just forced your teeth to grow into the desired shape? That's...”

The Captain nodded enthusiastically. “Well, yes. And that was _after_ we stopped just pulling them out with big metal things called...”

Herros held out his hand and closed his eyes. “I'm gonna ask you to stop right there.”

Shepard noticed Norben was taking notes on his omni-tool, just like Mordin used to do. She focused back on the asari and the specialist's end of the table in time to hear that they were still on the topic of class warfare.

“The French Revolution was inevitable in retrospect,” the specialist said, tipping back his head to finish his drink. Jatia just stared at him. The turian woman sitting with them leaned over to her and Shepard heard her whisper.

“How many wars did they have again, my love?”

Jatia shrugged, utterly perplexed. Two krogan who had drifted down to their end of the table nudged each other.

“Not enough,” said one before starting to laugh. His companion snorted.

“Yeah, they have some catching up to do.”

Jatia seemed to have come out of her daze and pinned them both with a glare.

A young woman in mechanic's overalls poked her head in. “Which French Revolution? They had about a dozen that century.”

The specialist grinned at her. “Good point.”

The turian woman leaned over to Jatia again and whispered, “Who are they talking about? I know they hate some Stalin and Hitler a lot.”

Jatia whispered back, “Flakka, my darling, I have lost count how many people they hated over the centuries. I'm just trying to get through this nonsense.”

“This is insane,” Garrus said softly. Wrex grinned and Shepard joined him.

“This is humanity, sweetie,” she said.

“How did you even survive to become spacefaring again?” Garrus teased. She poked him in the waist, earning herself a grunt and a heated look before turning her attention back to the dentistry conversation to see how it was going.

“Alcohol can, in fact, be used as a painkiller,” the Alliance soldier was saying. The krogan at his side nodded as if this was obvious.

“Not _another_ race like this,” Norben wailed in dismay.

Herros just looked blank. To no one in particular he asked, “Can we put them back already and take away their relay?”

The Alliance soldier grinned wide. “But we haven't told you about open heart surgery yet.”

Herros glared at him before finally barking out a laugh that sounded distinctly horrified. “Tell me you aren't serious.”

From somewhere at the back of the room there came a shout. “Wait, tell them about the people who are still functioning after half their brain is shot out of their head!”

Norben shot up straight in his seat. Shepard couldn't tell if he was going to bolt or ask detailed questions. It could be hard to tell with salarians.

The Captain took over from there. “Right let me tell you about facial reconstruction techniques in the WWI era. I studied it for a paper in my junior year.”

The first turian woman held up her hand. “I don't think we need to...”

“Oh, nobody wants to hear about your term paper again, Captain,” another soldier said with good-natured derision. “But picture this,” he said to the others, “a guy wakes up with a headache, and goes to see the doc.”

Norben nodded. “Sensible choice.”

“And he finds a bullet lodged in his head!”

“A what now?”

The grizzled krogan rubbed his jaw with nostalgia. “I had something similar happen. It wasn't a bullet, though, more like a giant shrapnel. Or was it a knife?”

Another krogan buffeted his shoulder. “You gotta lay off the ryncol, Durg.”

Durg, the old krogan, grinned and slammed back another shot in defiance. Meanwhile, the conversation went on without him.

The Captain was nodding vehemently at Norben, who must have asked something Shepard missed. “Oh yeah, sometimes when people get shot we just leave the bullet in there, especially if it didn’t hit anything vital.”

Jatia actually shuddered and shouted over the ensuing noise. “Can we just change the subject, maybe?”

The humans grinned all around and for a moment the lounge was quiet. Then, “Okay, so...car races!”

Herros breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally...something I can relate to.”

“We used to have like, _zero_ safety regulations. Just like...none.”

“I don't think I like where this is going,” Herros corrected himself.

Another human lifted his head from where he'd been slouching on the table. “Man, I need to see if the Autobahn is fixed yet next time we're on Earth.”

“Should be,” his companion said. “I know there's been a whole lot of reconstruction done already.”

Shepard was drawn away from the momentary reminder of what they'd survived by someone else who leaned into the conversation between Herros and the others. “Same with flying. A couple dudes just decided to, ya know, do it, and put themselves in a plane and they had no idea if it would work.”

Herros looked blank. “They what?”

“Also, our first rockets were hella sketchy. We sent up monkeys and dogs and shit into the sky, then decided, fuck it, we’re going up there too.”

Someone else spoke up. “We started giving the crew shotguns when we realized they weren’t dying from re-entry, but from being mauled by bears in the woods where they landed.”

The first one nodded. “Do _not_ look up Vladimir Komarov, if ya wanna sleep or anything.”

Herros was already reaching for his omni-tool, seemingly in spite of himself. “You can't just say that, and expect us to not look.”

“Yeah,” the other one said, “the Challenger was also a pretty gruesome thing. Didn’t stop us from launching rockets though. Felt disrespectful not to keep going.”

A woman in specialist colors poked her head into the crowd. “We also sent out a car. I still don't understand why.”

“A car? Like, a whole car?” Herros asked. There was a round of affirmative noises from the whole group. Herros looked at each of them, plainly confused. “But why?”

“I don't know,” the woman said with a shrug.

The Captain spoke up again, having finished her drink. “We don't like to speak about those days.”

“Hey, Cap, do you ever think...we're a bit impulsive sometimes?”

The Captain grinned. “Nah.”

Jatia, seemed to have found some level of equanimity with the conversation, or was drunk enough herself to no longer care. Shepard watched her lean over to her partner, Flakka, and whisper noisily. “Gruesome health treatments are okay, but not the space car. Noted.”

Shepard couldn't see who was still speaking, but she could hear it. “It’s more the guy who did it. He’s a dark figure in our history.”

The other end of the room seemed to have foregone any further talk and Shepard turned in time to see a krogan lifting an apparently willing human right off her feet. “Hey guys, check this out! What did you say it was again?”

The human shouted as the krogan tossed her. “ _Yeet_!”

The rest of the humans around them chorused together, “This bitch empty!”

Meanwhile, the airborne human was laughing as she flew through the air to be caught by too many clumsy hands across the table. “Fastball special!”

There were cheers. Wrex was laughing so hard he bent over. Garrus was looking at Shepard with something very like disappointment in her entire race. She heard Herros whisper to Jatia.

“Can we take away their relay now?”

“Me next! Me next!” drowned out the asari's reply to Herros. He shook his head and stood up, evidently leaving the premises before it went further downhill. He was not too steady on his feet, and never even saw the trio of galactic heroes as he stumbled past them.

The Captain swiveled around in her chair to watch Herros leaving. “But I haven't even told you about the Hindenburg yet!”

Flakka was laughing. Jatia was beginning to look like she agreed with Herros. “Why did we trust you with our technology again? How have you not wiped yourselves out!”

“Medi-gel,” one of the others said, snickering. “What, you actually thought we did all this stuff without it?”

“C'mon, Banks, don't lie to the asari. We totally _did_ do all this shit without Medi-gel.”

A third human leaned onto the table where Herros had been sitting. “When he gets back, I'm gonna tell him about the Titanic.”

The first two nodded drunkenly. Jatia looked trapped.

“Ooh, somebody pull up Reddit!”

Norben held up a hand. “Not another word on that. I've heard about that site.”

Shepard snorted to herself and met Garrus's suspicious expression with a mild glance. “What?”

Jatia and Flakka had decided to ignore one drunken set of humans for the other, turning to the end of the table where they were still throwing each other around.

Flakka asked, “Why are you letting the krogan throw you?”

The Crucible specialist answered. “We do it to our kids when they’re little, something about learning spatial coordination or something. They love it.”

Someone else piped up. “Most of us never grow out of loving it, it’s just harder when most of us don’t have biotics.”

Jatia looked like she regretted many life decisions at that moment. “You...you've been doing this since before you had biotics?”

“Oh yeah. You should see our rollercoasters!”

Norben muttered under his breath, “This discussion is a rollercoaster.”

Durg was grinning. “I don't see a problem.”

Another human spoke up. “Wait til you find out about skydiving.”

Jatia said, “I already regret asking anything at all.”

“So like we used to do when we’d jump out of ships and try to land on Kurban?” Durg asked.

“Yeah,” the specialist said, “but we didn’t do it for honor or anything. Just for kicks.”

“I’m starting to understand why even your colloquiums for fun are violent,” Norben groaned.

Someone continued on in that vein. “We also used to climb this one really tall mountain. It's full of corpses.”

“Yeah they’re all left where they are and used as landmarks.”

Jatia paled until her skin was the color of a noon sky. “What?”

Durg nodded. “Yeah, makes sense.”

In the midst of this, Herros returned, stumbling more and with a fresh drink. “Sparatus won’t revoke the human’s ability to use the relay. We’re stuck with them now.”

“How wonderful,” Jatia managed, diplomacy winning over sarcasm for the barest moment. Flakka laughed harder.

“You have to admit, darling, they're entertaining.”

“I suppose so.”

“Oh oh,” the specialist called out. “Speaking of colloquialisms, I think we should clear up the ‘yeah, nah’ and the ‘nah, yeah’ confusion.”

“I wish you would,” Norben muttered.

“Ah, Vakarian, Commander, this is where you ended up,” an authoritative voice cut through the various noises in the lounge. In the abrupt stillness, everyone turned to see Primarch Victus approach. “Vakarian, I need a moment of your time, if you're not busy.”

“Yes, sir.”

The pair of turians walked off, leaving the lounge in stunned silence as the realization dawned that they'd been watched having these drunken antics by the most decorated woman in the galaxy, her mate and her krogan best friend. Both of whom were also highly decorated veterans of the Reaper War. Shepard grinned at them all and tucked her arm in Wrex's before leading him away.

“As you were, people.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jatia T'ersi belongs to astridshepard. Thanks for letting me borrow her.


End file.
